White: A Novel (8 page)

This new philosophy reached all the way from the White House to the shielded analyst pods at Fort Meade and Boling Air Force Base; from coffee shops in Enid, Oklahoma, to the seventh floor of the Justice Department in Washington. When the military dug up anyone they deemed a “terrorist,” the CIA conducted the interrogations so the FBI wouldn’t have to look the other way. When the FBI fingered a suspect, they turned evidence not to a grand jury, but to a Joint Special Operations Command mission-planning cell, which meted justice from a Cobra gunship. What had been handled in open court now shuffled quietly through a maze of FISA warrants, “material witness” detentions, and national security obfuscation.

Lethal covert operations,
Jeremy thought. The world had become a place he poorly understood anymore, a world of ambiguous allegiances and trapdoor truths where the most difficult job was figuring out how the hell to add it up.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has illuminated the fasten seat belts sign,” a soothing young voice interrupted. “This signals our initial descent into the Washington DC area. FAA regulations require that passengers remain seated during the last thirty minutes of flight, so please do not get up or we will be forced to divert to an alternate airport.”

Jeremy checked his belt. A flight attendant walked over and gathered up his untouched meal.

“Not hungry?” the petite woman asked. She wore little makeup and her hair pulled back so tightly it left a permanent smile. A Singapore Airlines badge above her tiny left breast read Minge.

Jeremy shook his head. It wasn’t the meal that took his appetite. It was the plastic fork his government had given him to eat it with.

LOS ANGELES SCOFFED
at the inability of the nation’s capital to function in inclement weather. An unfair accusation of course: it barely rained in Southern California. But the entertainment industry held little respect for Washington’s censor-hungry bureaucrats. Washington was a city of narrow-minded politicians; the Left Coast had its own agenda. Which meetings had more impact on the world, after all, those held in stuffy Senate hallways or those in Beverly Hills over glasses of designer water?

The man with the pistol in his hand was unlike most Californians, however. To him, Washington was an objective. A target. Though it may have been three thousand miles away, he felt intimately connected to its people and their immediate future.

“There’s no point in calling out,” the man with the pistol said. A frightened-looking Saudi cleric named Ashar al Bayad sat beside him with his hands secured behind his back. Drool ran out of the Arab’s mouth at the corners, where the rubber ball stuck in it left gaps. “These walls are insulated. No one will hear you.”

The man with the pistol double-checked the ligature—simple hemp cord at the wrists and ankles. It might not hold as well as the triple-bar police cuffs he carried in his day job, but it would burn completely in a fire. There would be no trace of bondage.

“I apologize for this disrespect, Brother,” the man with the pistol said. “But it is all for the good of our cause. God is great. You will see.”

The captor opened a four-by-four-foot wooden box filled with fifty pounds of Czech-made Semtex—a special batch designed for use in land mines. He adjusted the detonator to make certain it would fail to function as designed. Under normal circumstances, this massive I.E.D. would devastate everything within two hundred feet, but that was not the plan. This device would “squib,” or explode in a low-order detonation. There would be flames, but little boom.

When he felt certain that all details had been checked and double-checked, the man with the pistol picked up a long red-and-white Snap-on toolbox, pulled a California Electric cap onto his head, and stepped out of his box truck.

The work order in his pocket called for service on a transformer atop the LAX Radisson. The sun shone brightly in the late-afternoon sky. Santa Ana winds blew down from the mountains, ruffling his shirt and filling his nose with desert smells.

“
Allah huakbar,
” he mumbled under his breath. A 767 wide-body inbound from some destination east roared over his head as Ibrahim hefted the thirty-pound toolbox.

Heavy but effective,
he assured himself of the .50 caliber Barrett inside. No matter. It was just a short trip to the elevator and then an effortless pull of the trigger.

“FASTEN YOUR SEAT
belt, please,” Minge the flight attendant politely coaxed one of the other first class passengers.

Always someone,
Jeremy thought.
Shouldn’t the wealthy, successful, and well traveled behave a little better up here in the good seats?

He wouldn’t have known, of course. Only the unexpected generosity of a sympathetic ticket counter clerk in Bangkok had saved him from a 10,000-mile ride in coach.

“Well, hello again, folks, this is your captain,” a voice announced over the intercom. He sounded Midwestern, to Jeremy’s surprise. Singapore Air with an American crew? “We’re about to start our final descent into the Washington DC area, and as I said before, they have a pretty significant storm down there.”

Jeremy had seen nothing but darkness and streaks of snow in his window for the past fifteen minutes. Modern planes could land in anything, right? Surely they’d divert if it were too dangerous.

“The tower has cleared us for landing, but it might be a little rough. Tighten up those belts, if you will, and we’ll have you on the ground in just a few minutes. And thanks for flying Singapore Air.”

Tighten up those belts?
Jeremy laughed quietly to himself. It had never occurred to him, waiting there in that Bangkok hotel room, that the most perilous part of this mission would be flying home.

THREE NETWORKS AND
all the cable news channels preempted regular programming for the president’s address. Most of them simply integrated it into nonstop coverage of the terrorist attacks, anyway, providing an eight-minute respite for threadbare producers, anchors, reporters, experts, and bookers who hadn’t had so much as a coffee break since the first bomb exploded.

Vice President Beechum watched the speech from her West Wing office, a relatively bland space distinguished by low ceilings and a view of the Washington Monument. Despite early resolutions to add color and a little feminine flair to the nation’s second-most-exclusive suite, she hadn’t gotten around to so much as new curtains.

“That man scares the hell out of me,” the vice president said, leaning back into a cordovan leather chair that weighed as much as her Mercedes.

“Brian Williams or the president?” James asked. He punched up the volume.

“Take your pick.” She laughed. The NBC anchor sat behind the traditional desk on the network’s
Nightly News
set in New York. General Monte Derak flanked Williams to the right; two of their so-called terrorism experts on his left.

“It’s all such a spectacle, you know?” Beechum said. “This is exactly what they want . . . the terrorists. They’d be nothing but a bunch of Third World thugs if we didn’t pump them up with round-the-clock coverage. The richest corporation in America couldn’t afford this kind of advertising.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, the president appears to be ready to . . .” The anchor started an introduction, but the president interrupted him.

“My fellow Americans,” Venable began. “I speak to you tonight with a heavy heart . . . but with a mind bent on justice.”

“Well, he’s off to a good start,” James said. “Gotta give him that.”

Beechum nodded. Speeches had always been his strong suit.

“Less than twenty-four hours ago, spineless cowards attacked us in our heartland. They murdered innocent women and children. They brazenly took credit for these barbaric acts. They demonstrated the depravity, the evil, that some will stoop to in the name of religion.”

The president looked troubled yet resolute. Chase had been wrong about his color; from the healthy vigor in his cheeks to the tone of his furrowed brow and the firmly knotted tie beneath his jackhammer Adam’s apple, Venable looked as telegenic as any Hollywood actor. Prime-time perfect.

“He’s good, but I just don’t get the feeling that I can trust him,” Beechum observed. “I’m not sure what it is, but something just strikes me as wrong.”

“The only things I trust are you and the good Lord.” James smiled, only half kidding. “But whatever bothers you has nothing to do with his looks. This guy’s hair is perfect.”

THE WASHINGTON SNIPER
felt the plane before he saw it, that disembodied roar sneaking out of the north. It grew quickly, filling the air around him like the echo of some mountain beast, raising goose bumps on the back of his neck. Or was that the cold?

“God’s will,” he said in English. The roar grew louder; thunder rolling down the frozen Potomac.

Every detail had been covered. The snow-draped sniper sat cross-legged behind the rooftop parapet, hidden by the night. A Barrett .50 caliber rifle rested on a matte steel bipod, tight against his shoulder. He’d just called the Indonesian up to the roof under ruse.

“God’s will.”

He placed his eye against the cold rubber bellows of his scope reticle.

What do the other shooters have in their sights right now?
he wondered. But then the nose cone appeared in his crosshairs and all other matters of this world left him.

JEREMY HAD NOTHING
to read, so he sat and stared out his window as the 747 descended into the teeth of the storm.

Daddy’s home!
Jeremy could hear his kids yelling as he played out the homecoming in a slow-moving daydream.
Daddy’s home!

Caroline and the kids would be there at the front door when he walked in. He’d called them with a flight number and an ETA, hoping to make it somewhat close to on-time. He’d missed so many of these welcome-home parties, flying off from one mission to another without even stopping for a hug and change of clothes.

Daddy’s home!
he heard himself calling out. The 747’s landing gear whistled as the pilot alternately throttled up and back, trying to gauge the miserable conditions.

Jeremy watched snow streak his frosted window, imagining that his suburban DC home lay out there beneath him. The roads would be a nightmare, he knew, but that would barely slow him down. Tonight, nothing was going to come between this endlessly traveling FBI agent and a family that still found ways to love him.

VENABLE LOOKED BRAVE
yet caring; angry yet composed. Like the best of politicians, he made up for in appearance what he lacked in ability, but according to the FBI and CIA, the government, this series of bombings may be just the beginning of something much worse.

“You know, it’s damn scary to sit here behind the curtains, watching the Wizard pull the levers,” James said as he and Beechum watched the speech. “You want to believe in your government and all its resources, but then you see what really goes on behind the scenes and wonder what in hell keeps it all together.”

James had worked in Washington long enough to understand that no one person ever had all the answers. The “big picture” was a myth; to chase it, folly. “He looks good, but when it comes right down to it, this guy is way out over his skis. We’re in trouble here, aren’t we?”

“There’s something you need to know, James,” Beechum said. She stood up from her chair, still focused on the television screen. “Something that stays between us. Something the president himself doesn’t know.”

This man had served her for more than ten years and had led her through a scandal that almost ruined her life. She knew no closer confidant.

“Mahar is dead.”

James lifted his shoulders.

“I know. I saw that in the Blue Thing forty minutes ago. I’m sure the president plans to announce it during the speech.”

“Hear me out,” Beechum said. She began to pace as she so often did. “There’s more that you’re not going to read in any intelligence briefing.”

“Are you sure you want to tell me this?” James asked. He well remembered his boss’s iron-fisted adherence to security protocols. “I don’t have the proper clearances for matters this sensitive.”

“There are no clearances for matters this sensitive,” she said in a soft but direct tone. “It happened Sunday morning near a little hut compound in the jungles of Indonesia.”

“Agency?” James asked. “The CIA seems to get most of these gigs, nowadays.”

“They had an element in the assault team, but several different entities played a role. None of them will ever admit to it, but . . .”

“A black op,” James assumed. He decided to let further inquiry pass.

Beechum nodded. She looked deep in thought.

“Mahar had three Americans with him when he died.”

She spit out the words as if they tasted bad in her mouth.

“Americans?” James reacted. “Are you sure?”

“Good ol’ boy, Wonder Bread white, catfish jiggin’, tobacco-chewing Billy Bob rednecks. Saw them with my own eyes.”

“My God.”

“I know. We’ve never seen any intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda or any of its surrogates had recruited American players. Not Anglos, anyway.”

“Who?” James asked. “John Walker Lindh types?”

“No.” Beechum shook her head. “Something more . . .”

Her voice trailed off.

“Have we interrogated these men? Surely we can get some answers out of them.”

Beechum stopped pacing and turned toward her top aide.

“What we’ve seen in Atlanta and California is not the end of our problems; it’s just the beginning,” she said. “One of the Americans with Mahar escaped, and he’s . . .”

“What the hell is this?” James interrupted her.

Without warning, the president of the United States disappeared from their television screen and Brian Williams appeared.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt the president’s address to bring you this breaking news bulletin.” He grimaced. The anchor’s face filled the screen in a closeup so tight that you could see the brushstrokes in his tan.